One of Google's most influential product engineers, Lars Rasmussen, has parted ways with the company to join Facebook.

Rasmussen becomes the third product co-founder to leave Google in a week, suggesting in a newspaper interview that the sheer size of the company meant it was becoming increasingly hard to get things done.

The co-founder of Google Maps and Google Wave joins Chad Hurley, the co-founder of YouTube, and Omar Hamoui, the co-founder of mobile advertising platform AdMob, at the Mountain View exit door.

On the death of Google Wave, which was axed after 15 months in August due to disappointing takeup, Rasmussen said: "We were not quite the success that Google was hoping for, and trying to persuade them not to pull the plug and ultimately failing was obviously a little stressful.

"It wasn't something that I would like to bet my life on, but all that excitement we created when we first unveiled the project was based on something real. It takes a while for something new and different to find its footing and I think Google was just not patient," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Rasmussen, a University of Edinburgh computer science graduate, said Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg won him over with a "compelling personal pitch", and that the social network was "a sort of once-in-a-decade type of company".

"The energy there is just amazing, whereas it can be very challenging to be working in a company the size of Google," he said. And therein lies the problem. "The single biggest problem" for the company with more than 23,000 employees, says Om Malik at Giga Om.

"For the longest time Google has been the beacon for the smartest and most talented people in the world, especially from an engineering perspective," Om writes.

"If these super-smart people start getting frustrated by their inability to get anything done, then they are going to follow Rasmussen to somewhere else where they can find a more receptive and nurturing environment."

His new brief – a compelling enough pitch for the move from Sydney to San Francisco – is: "Come hang our with us for a while and we'll see what happens."